Previous research has found that participants can identify a target letter or number in a stream of rapidly presented items. More recently, researchers have shown that participants can detect a categorically defined target object in one of these rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) streams. The results suggest that there may be practical applications for RSVP-based search. To explore this possibility, we performed two experiments that compared accuracy between a typical visual search task and a search in which the display was segmented and presented as a RSVP stream. Across conditions we equated the total search time. By presenting every segment of the overall display rapidly at fixation, the RSVP condition could benefit from the lack of attention shifts necessary in full display searches, a method that requires relatively slow eye movements and fixations. Experiment 1 presented 24 Landolt Cs (serially or in a whole display) and participants were required to identify the color of the C with a break on the left. Performance was significantly better for the RSVP condition than the full display condition. Experiment 2 replicated the RSVP advantage using much more complex scenes ("Wheres Waldo?" images). These results suggest that real world searches may benefit from segmenting the display and presenting images in a RSVP stream.